Drama throws apt questions

By Kim Ji-soo

I confess I am addicted to K-drama. I watch drama after drama and empathize with why viewers in Asia love them so much.

Among the latest dramas on my radar, there is one titled “The Queen of Office,”starring top actress Kim Hye-soo and actor Oh Ji-ho as the main protagonists.

Ironically, the drama is based on the Japanese comic book, “Haken no Hinkaku,” which was also transformed onto the Japanese small screen. The first few series were so disappointingly similar to the Japanese drama I pondered not watching it at all.

But an addict is not an addict without a reason, and I somehow found myself watching. As this paper has reported several times, the protagonist Kim is a irregular worker named “Miss Kim.” Once upon a time in the Korean workforce during 1970s-1980s, women were called with slight degradation “Miss Kim.” Then after some time passed and a new generation of female workers entered the workforce, “Miss Kim” was shot down and everyone addressed everyone by name. In the drama, she demands everyone calls her “Miss Kim” and regards it as an invasion of privacy if anyone inquires about her real name.

She is very able and not below or above the work assigned within her designated working hours of nine to six. She charges for attending “hoesik,” or after-work parties, as I am sure Korean salaried workers would love to do. Korean workers don’t usually charge even for the weekend time they put in for work, even if it’s detailed in company regulations. Such dedication and loyalty is expected and demanded in the hurrah-hurrah, can-do work spirit. She doesn’t strive to be part of a team; but she’s a problem-solver with uncountable degrees and certificates when a crisis arises. She believes in a meritocratic approach to work, not the “we are family” one her young boss believes in and tries to preach to his teammates. She deplores friendship at work, but she works subtly to help out colleagues in need. But she doesn’t want them knowing she is helping. She also has a life outside of the office, when she dances salsa. When her three months contract is up, she leaves the country then returns for another short-term job.

In this tight labor market where college graduates increasingly have to settle for short-term jobs, she is their goddess, the very being of their dreams. For people already in the corporate factory, she is the antithesis of their being. She has a life outside of the office; she doesn’t identify herself by her job.

Okay. I went a little too far with the pseudo-analysis of the corporate life in Korea via the popular drama. But by postulating a figure so antithetical to an average Korean salaried worker, the television series does throw a lot of questions at the new labor market facing many. Being a salaried worker once upon a time meant life-time employment, social status and a self-identity in Korea. It was and still remains a privilege, despite the fact people leave the workforce around 57 and live several decades longer on a meager pension. Addressing this asymmetry, the National Assembly approved legislation to extend the retirement age to 61 for companies with 300 or more employees.

The move is laudable yet raises new challenges for individuals and companies. How to create new jobs for the young while retaining the older workforce? For individual workers, what will come after 61? Again this is a solution for a relatively more privileged sliver of the workforce. So many people make their living in many different ways. Nevertheless, the degree in which Korean society forces a sense of identity through a job is stronger, I believe, than in other member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It’s still a society where face-saving culture lingers to let external factors determine who one is. Within the new administration, the creating of new growth sectors and jobs through a creative economy is the motto. The definition of a “creative economy” is opaque, leaving room for interpretation. Why don’t workers take this buzzword to become an creative entrepreneur of their own lives?